While massively multiplayer on-line games (MMOs) are enormously popular, their use of the client-server architecture causes them to suffer from scalability issues and high maintenance costs. In contrast, the public server architecture employed by most first-person shooter (FPS) games scales more easily by relying on user-supplied hosting and user-generated content, but lacks persistence between servers that is required in the MMO genre. This paper examines an architecture that leverages the resources of the public server approach to support a scalable, persistent MMO. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.3 [Computer Systems Organization]: Special-purpose and Application-based Systems General Terms Design Keywords Online games, MMO